The Entertainment Room Podcast

Faulty water dampens student life

Water is one of humanities’ basic survival needs and would be considered a necessity to a healthy student life. However, a series of problems with a new water tank has left students in three campus houses without access to water.

For the past few weeks, the residents of houses 4-6 in Harwich Court have been experiencing numerous issues with either a lacking of hot water or no water at all every time the new system trips.

This re-occurrence of faulty taps, cold showers, and no water in general has left 48 students in a predicament where they are deprived of one of our basic survival needs.

Ruby Barry, a first-year drama student living in house six said: “I had to wait several hours for my shower to run anything remotely warm – I know my flatmate had to have a frozen cold shower because he just had to get clean.”

Another student in house 5 reported that their shower and taps had
stopped working altogether, but university engineers had responded fairly quickly to fix it. However, it had stopped working again the following day.

“I had the same problem around a week ago. My shower had stopped working and our kitchen had no hot water. They fixed it after I reported it, but the problem seems unsolved now,” Ken Lee, a third-year international relations student from house 5, told us.

When questioned about why this was such a regular occurrence, an engineer who had been called out to resolve the issue replied that the problem was stemming from the installation of a new water tank. Evidently, it’s been doing more harm than good with engineers having to keep coming out to fix the system each time it trips.

However, whilst a lot of the students can understand the university’s dilemma in fixing this problem and also tending to other problems across campus, many cannot forgive the lack of communication with the residents.

Many of the complainants have stated that things wouldn’t be so bad if they knew what was happening and had received a warning that the tank may be performing poorly. They say there’s a lacking of communication from the maintenance team.

This includes Charlotte Dickinson who is a first-year law student living in house 6:

“The fact that the water isn’t working or is cold is obviously a massive problem. But it’s also the fact that we’ve had no warning or message about it – that’s not acceptable.”